The Wesleyan Center for 21st Century Studies exists to inspire a new generation of Wesleyan thinking that will influence the broader church and social worlds of the 21st century.
The Wesleyan Center
The Wesleyan Center provides research opportunities for resident faculty and visiting scholars on issues vital to the Center's objectives.
The Center supports Wesleyan perspectives relating to faith, thought and practice. Traditionally, the liberal arts have stimulated knowledge and appreciation of the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities. The Center's programs build on the liberal arts tradition by stimulating research in keeping with the University's educational objectives. Researchers fulfill the Center's commitment to Wesleyan interests and concerns through one or more of the following:
- exploration of developments in the natural sciences and the humanities
- cultivation of strategies to influence the academy, church, or contemporary society
- definition of standards for Christian living in a post-modern world.
Analytical and synthetic proposals, transformation and witness projects, collaborative efforts involving more than one scholarly discipline fall within the guidelines of the Center. Studies involving one or more of the following disciplines are especially desirable: literature, history, sociology, psychology, education, political science, theology, philosophy, the fine arts, and the natural sciences. The intent is to be forward-looking, with faculty development and enhancement of professional expertise as accompanying goals. The Center assumes that such creative efforts benefit faculty, students and the educational objectives of higher education. Proposals are evaluated under referee procedures.
The Intellectual Program
For the immediate future, the Center intends to
sponsor individual scholars, conferences, projects and symposia capable of producing Wesleyan perspectives bearing on faith, thought and practice for the 21st century. In the 1920s, many evangelical Wesleyans left concerns for society and the human condition left behind by turning insular and individualistic, a change church historians call "the great reversal." The Center desires to explore the possibility of a second reversal, seeking to support a stance broad enough and substantial enough to include the personal world, the social world, and the natural world on the threshold of the third millennia.
Issues thought to be crucial for Christian higher education, the church and society include questions of doctrinal integrity and relevance, institutional structures and viability, ethical complexities and applications, political philosophies and engagement, personal identity, and community. In addition, a need exists for ethical or transformational studies of war and peace, of urban decay and violence, of advancing science and technology, of social pluralism and community. The Center intends to publish two books at the beginning of the 21st century.
Opportunities
The Center offers the following programs to fulfill its mission and interests:
Summer Scholars
The Center provides a limited number of $3000 grants for either exploring or concluding a scholarly project that defines a Wesleyan position within a specific discipline.
Center Fellows
The Center awards a limited number of course reductions (normally six units in one semester) to enable full-time faculty members to produce a scholarly study or activity on a topic relating to the Center's mission. This award is designed for faculty in a "development" phase of a study.
Visiting Scholars
The Center provides a limited number of research and writing opportunities to self-supporting faculty from other institutions who are engaged in a study related to the Center's areas of interest. A designated Visiting Scholar is provided an office in the library with access to the University's academic computer.
Historical Perspective and Responsibility
Point Loma Nazarene University is heir to the liberal arts tradition of cosmopolitan perspective, moral reflection and intellectual coherence. It is also heir to the Wesleyan tradition of plenary inspiration of scripture, of empirical and inductive reasoning, and of moral social reform. From its earliest days under the leadership of Dr. H. Orton Wiley, the University has engaged the broader cultural, theological, philosophical, and scientific ideas of an age. Over the years its faculty has included men and women dedicated to policies and actions of greater social justice.
Point Loma Nazarene University takes seriously its responsibility to avoid being an island depository of current knowledge and horticultural beauty. It has a prophetic responsibility to quest anew for the mind of God that brings together the normative and the empirical into a coherent view of the Christian's transformational role in the world of the 21st century. That responsibility goes beyond the classroom. As part of that responsibility, Point Loma Nazarene University has created the Wesleyan Center for 21st Century Studies.